The Deluge arrives

Smaller than anticipated.

After much refreshing of the UPS tracking page, my shipment from the Warstore arrived yesterday.  I was expecting a largeish box, considering the Warmachine starter and the Bombardiers were part of the shipment, so you can imagine my surprise when it was a "normal" sized UPS mailer box and not a proper fold-up cardboard box.  (I worked in receiving for years at Tower Records(RIP) so I have an unhealthy interest in boxes and shipping.)  It made a bit more sense once I opened up the box and saw the size of the Warmachine starter.  No doubt you've seen the size of it by now as well, but if not just look to the left of this paragraph.  GW starter boxes come in a particular dimension, as do most boardgames, yet the Warmachine box is much smaller.  It's about the size of a record if that reference has meaning for anyone anymore.

Super thin, about the size of a PC game box.

Despite the small size, the box is packed with goodness.  The mini rulebook is more akin to newsprint or comic book paper than the regular Warmachine books are, but I don't anticipate durability issues.  After my brief inspection it looks like an exact replica of the Mk. 2 book, only smaller.  The dice didn't have the PP logo, which is unfortunate.  The various intro booklets, three in all, looked to be a bit more in depth than the GW equivalents.  They even packed in a ruler which was a bit of laminated paper, or perhaps just a paper-thin piece of plastic.  The minis are packed into discreet baggies so there's no digging in a pile of parts for the piece you're looking for.  That the models come sans sprue is no news, but considering this is my first experience with them I'll dwell a bit.  For the most I was impressed by them.  Mould lines were sparse and generally confined to non-detail areas.  The flash that appeared was fairly robust, though far short of the mould-slip sort of lines I've seen all too often on GW kits.  There were a few spots where larger bits of sprue had been clipped off that took a bit of work, but my first impression was a good one.  I left most of the bags alone but had to do at least a little constructing.

Prepare for a WSIWYG reign of terror.

What did I work on you ask?  Black Ivan of course.  Not only is he a monster on the table who has been masquerading as a regular Destroyer for too long, he was also the most self-contained model I could think of to build.  Previous reports are that PP's plastic isn't like GW's plastic, so the usual plastic glue that I use stayed on the shelf in favor of regular superglue.  The model went together both easier and harder than expected.  All the pieces fit together in a logical manner and it looks to be all but impossible to fit the wrong bit in.  That said, I managed to skip the "shoulder" bits that connect the arms to the torso.  When I took a look at my "finished" model it seemed far too willowy to be a Khadoran jack.  When I compared my work to a picture of Black Ivan from the PP site and realized my error.  The "shoulders" took a bit of work to adhere to the torso, but I think next time around I can rough them up a bit and they should stick better.  Also the ball joints were slicker than expected and took a bit of putty to hold in place.  The big metal claw is a concern, but I glued some random crap ballast to the bottom of the base and it seems stable enough.  The metal gives Ivan a nice bit of heft as well.  I'm half tempted to leave the base as is since it has a more robust texture than I'm used to, but I'll surely rock and sand it as usual later today.  In the immediate future, it's time to grab my case and get ready for the imminent clash with EV.  Hopefully today goes better than last week did.